My Daughter, My Mother (30 page)

She looked at the glass as if she had forgotten she was holding it, then slowly rinsed it out and stood it upside down on the plastic drainer.

I must water those plants, she thought, noticing the gasping geraniums on the patio.

But she just stood. That odd, swimmy feeling came over her, as it did a lot of the time, as if she wasn’t quite present in her own life. When she walked about, even that didn’t feel right, as if the floor was padded with cushions. Her body was full of sensations. Were these feelings normal? She could no longer decide.

With a shaky hand she reached for her ciggies and lit up, then stood staring out. The lawnmower (still not fixed) was grounded by the old clapboard fence.

‘Where were you going, that day I saw you?’ she had asked Fred, years later when they had met again. ‘You were running down Cregoe Street – you looked in a terrible state. Was that the day she . . . ?’

‘No,’ Fred had said. ‘That wouldn’t have been that day. It was just before. I was running for the doctor. That afternoon I came into the house and Mom was out cold on the floor, in front of Bobby an’ all. He was crying like a babby – he dain’t know what to do. I never knew what she’d taken, but I went for Dr Greaves. It was after that – a few days later – when she . . . yer know.’

Thoughts thudded through her head. She couldn’t seem to stop them. She recalled standing in the street that day for who knew how long. She had no idea where Fred and the others would have gone or any hope of ever seeing them again. This was how life went. People were taken from you, and that was that.

What she could remember now was somehow walking back to Upper Ridley Street, to the house that contained her unloving father and the vile, slovenly Peggy Loach. She stopped in the darkening yard, looking across at the mean, cold house and something in her gave way, like a rock fall.

Her sister Elsie stood facing her, her pale hair straggling out of its pins after a chaotic morning of toil with a maiding tub, dolly and mangle while minding two tiny children. She was wearing a stained, damp pinner and had her hands on her hips in an attempt at resistance.

‘
Please
,’ Margaret insisted. ‘I’ll do anything for you. I’ll cook and clean – I know how. And I can help with these two . . .’

Susan and Heather were leaping about the room, excited as baby goats at Margaret’s arrival.

Elsie’s face wore a frown, but Margaret could see she was on the point of caving in. The offer of help was too tempting, even if it did mean another mouth to feed. And Elsie had always had a kind heart.

‘But what about school?’ she protested. ‘You can’t get to school from all the way over there. And you can’t just stop – I’m not having the wag man pestering me. You have to stay on now, till you’re fifteen, they say.’

‘I’ll go to another school, over here,’ Margaret said. ‘I’ll do anything you say, but don’t make me live with the Old Man any more. You wouldn’t want to, would you?’

Elsie’s face darkened. ‘That I wouldn’t, especially not now that scheming Irish trollop’s moved in on him an’ all.’

‘She hits me,’ Margaret admitted miserably. ‘And all they ever do is drink.’

She didn’t cry because she almost never did, but Elsie could see all the troubles laid out.

‘Well, when would you come?’ she asked.

‘Now.’ Margaret had with her a small bundle containing her few bits of clothing and Fred’s ring. ‘I haven’t left anything over there.’

Elsie pulled a chair out from the table and sat down rather abruptly. She laughed suddenly.

‘Well, I’ll say summat for you – you know when your mind’s made up, don’t yer? What in heaven’s name is Jack gunna say?’

As Margaret was to find out, Elsie frequently wondered what her husband Jack was going to say about this or that, when the fact was that Jack Trinder left major statements of opinion to Elsie. Jack was cheerful and sandy-haired, with a smile that crinkled his face into mischievous lines. He was truly a family man and hardworking. He had stayed in Birmingham throughout the war in a reserved occupation working in munitions. Though a bit out of it among the forces lads, there were plenty like him in the city, and he had his mates around him and had not suffered the problems of a disrupted marriage. He and Elsie rubbed along happily; she was in charge, though she pretended he was, and they had two sweet, happy little girls.

Margaret soon realized she had landed on her feet. She bunked up with Susan and Heather in one room, while Elsie and Jack had the other. They didn’t discover for some time how Ted and Peggy had taken her bailing out on them. More energetic people might have come looking for her, but they were either too drunk or too lazy to bother, and after a week or two Margaret started to relax. School was all right, certainly no worse than the last, and now she had the enjoyment of being with her two little nieces.

She stayed with Elsie and Jack for the rest of her single life – most of thirteen years, until she married Fred in 1960. Once she left school she picked up work in factories nearby. She was always a help to Elsie and a companion to the girls, especially Susan, to whom she was closest. News came from Dora Jennings that Peggy Loach had decamped from Upper Ridley Street not long after Margaret. With her skivvy gone, she thought herself too good for the place. Ted replaced her with another woman, then another. By 1951 he was dead of a liver complaint. Elsie and Margaret went to his funeral, but they had never seen him alive again.

When Elsie and Jack moved out to a little semi in Yardley in 1954, there was no thought but that Margaret would go with them. They were amiable, settled years, in which she felt safe, was obliging and grateful and expected very little for herself.

‘Why don’t you go out and enjoy yourself?’ Elsie would say sometimes. ‘Find a nice boy?’

Once or twice there was someone, but it never seemed to last. Margaret was already shy about her appearance and was never sure what to say to anyone. Boys found her closed and dull, and moved on to someone else. And Margaret never expected life to be especially good; she was just glad to keep it from being very bad. Safe and humdrum suited her. Once sweet-rationing was over, she took to sucking bull’s eyes and barley sugars, a comfort that had done her teeth no good. She also, enthusiastically, took up smoking.

After the move to Yardley, where for the first time she had her own room, she got fed up of having to take the bus into Birmingham to a factory every day. Instead she found herself jobs more locally, first in a grocer’s shop in Stoney Lane and later in a cafe nearby. She liked that job. It was sociable in a way that was not very demanding, but stopped her feeling isolated. She liked wearing an apron and feeling slightly official in it. She enjoyed the warm smells of toast and buns and tea, the repetitive actions of wiping tables and refilling sugar bowls.

One day as she was working her way round, wiping away cigarette ash and grains of sugar, she looked up into the face of a customer at the next table and their eyes fixed on each other’s. His face was thin, hollow-eyed, sad-looking. He paused, holding up a cup of tea.

‘Margaret?’ he said.

She came back to the present, still standing by the sink. It felt as if hours had passed. Turning to the clock, she saw that it had been seven minutes. Time seemed endless, slow as the flow of tar. The hours of the day alone in the house became huge and baggy. All she could hear was the tick of the living-room clock and a distant vibration of television from the house next door.

Fred Tolley. Her smile had met his that day. A man she had not seen for more than twelve years and whom she had barely known even then, when they were children. Yet they felt destined for each other.

‘Why did I marry Fred?’ Her lips moved, but there was no sound.

Answers came that she had never let herself think of before. Because he was the only one who ever wanted me, and I was grateful. Because he seemed kind. Because I wanted him to be Tommy, to take his place, like he did at the wharf all those years before. Because I had had tea at his house and thought he would offer me heaven. And because I had no idea what else to do . . .

Fred was a good man in his way. They had a life, a family. But his own past had taken its toll. He was timid, cowed by life, never seemed to feel much about anything, though she knew with shame that he felt more for her than she ever had for him. That he loved her, or at least needed her, and in some way she felt contempt for him for doing so. She had never felt she could tell him who she was – the real Maggie, and all it had meant. He would have stared blankly at her and shrugged. The dread of that was worse than him not knowing anything at all.

A terrible sensation rose in her, like nausea, a swelling sensation that filled her with panic. She was finding it hard to breathe. For a moment she put her hands over her face as if to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. It was like something that had happened after Karen was born – as if there was something inside struggling to get out. She hadn’t been able to bear it. The doctor had given her the pills.

Unsteadily she went to the back door and stepped out. The heat was building up and she stayed in the shade of the patio. She clutched a fist to her lips, biting into it to stop herself screaming out, howling like a wolf across the back gardens of Kings Heath. Managing to control it, she leaned against the wall by the kitchen window and took deep, shuddering breaths until it passed.

Thirty-Seven

As the summer went by, Joanne could no longer pretend to herself that things at home were in any way all right. In fact she could barely remember what ‘all right’ meant.

The phone calls continued, Dave checking up on her two, three or more times a day. She had given up asking him not to. Even though she rolled her eyes every time the phone rang, she tried to sound relaxed and appeasing, though her nerves were often at screaming pitch. If she ignored it, he just kept ringing again. And if she was out, had warned him she was going to the shops or the park with Amy, he would always call an extra time later in the day.

In the evening, once he came home, they never saw anyone else any more or socialized together. It had been harder since Amy anyway, but Dave’s mate Pete used to ask him out, and Michelle would come round once in a while. Now it had all fizzled out and they had lost contact with people. When she heard the engine of his car fall silent outside the house and his key in the lock, she felt a surge of claustrophobic panic. From then on they were shut in together.

That was when her efforts truly began. She would be waiting now, often reading Amy a story, tensed as a wire, even though she tried to pretend to Amy that nothing in the world was wrong. Even before he came home, her heart would start to pound.

‘Here’s Daddy!’ she’d say brightly, despite her sledge-hammering pulse. She’d pick Amy up and go through to meet him, a smile pinned across her face.

‘Hello, love – all right?’

‘Yeah, all right,’ he usually replied, stiffly kissing first her cheek, then Amy’s. ‘Just gunna change.’ He would go upstairs.

And she would be left in the hall in the whiff of resentment that came off him like aftershave. There was always an atmosphere, a tense-making undertow of angry feelings, no matter how hard she tried to be the perfect wife. She always had the tea ready. And she spent every evening working to dispel his suspicion, to make sure he was in a safe mood.

Once Amy was tucked up she served him dinner, watched TV, sometimes holding hands, while he drank cans of lager. Then bed. He wanted sex almost every night now. It was not lovemaking, not anything that took account of what she might like or need. He would lie up close to her until he was aroused enough to begin, when, without speaking, he would pull on her to roll her over, or push into her from behind. She never refused. She had tried at first to see it as desire, hoping it might bring them closer in a way they couldn’t manage with words. Now she knew it was nothing like desire. His quick, hard thrusts and the way he pushed her down, were a way of dominating her, and left her feeling sad and invaded. But she did what he wanted, to avoid trouble.

There had been no major scene, not for weeks. He hadn’t hit her, or even lost his temper, thanks to her efforts. It was like shadow-boxing, always something there under the surface to fend off. But at least there was a kind of peace. Nothing had happened.

He didn’t like any changes. One day Karen phoned and asked Joanne if she’d like to go out for a drink. Joanne was really pleased that Karen had asked, but didn’t feel she could go.

‘Sorry, Sis – I’d really like to, but you know it’s not a very good time of day for me. There’s Amy to get to bed and Dave’s tea . . .’

‘Well, why can’t Dave get Amy to bed?’ Karen asked. ‘He can look after her sometimes, surely?’

‘Yes, I know, but it’s just the stage she’s at. It disrupts her routine and then she won’t sleep. We’ll get through it in the end. Maybe we could do it some other time?’

‘God, you’ve really turned into a proper little housewife, haven’t you?’ Karen didn’t speak unkindly, she just sounded puzzled. When they were younger, Joanne had seemed by far the least domestic of the two. ‘Look, tell you what: maybe I could pop over and have a cuppa with you instead, and see Amy?’

Joanne hesitated. She could see how ridiculous this was, how scared she was to disrupt the delicate balance of things.

‘Well, yeah,’ she said slowly, knowing she sounded unwelcoming. ‘Would you be able to come quite early?’
And be gone before Dave gets home?
She couldn’t say that.
He doesn’t like me seeing anyone.

‘Okay, I’ll come Wednesday,’ Karen said. ‘I get off a bit earlier.’

She came wearing a pink-and-mauve flowery dress that showed off her curves and brought a bag of marshmallows for Amy. They had a cup of tea outside in the late-afternoon sunshine. Karen chatted about work, but then suddenly said, ‘Are you okay, Joanne?’ She squinted keenly at her. ‘You seem a bit . . .’

‘A bit what?’ Joanne fought to seem relaxed.

Karen put her head on one side. ‘I dunno. Nervy? You’re ever so dark under the eyes. And
skinny
. Have you lost weight?’